Recently I had dinner with two phenomenal women – amazing women actually. Each exceptionally accomplished. Yet firmly grounded in the reality of living – the good, the bad, the important, the yucky, and all matters of chaos, messiness and muddlings that get mixed throughout the living.

What was wonderfully striking about our dinner was the absence of chit-chat. We immediately engaged in the sincere discussion of living lives. The values we bring to the living. How those values challenge and enlighten the living. Where we find support for living our values. The values that matter and how we go after more of those values.

Yes, absolutely build your ark before the storm hits. And absolutely, positively stuff it to overflowing with Amazings.

Amazings who honor and value you. Amazings who care about perfectly, perfect you with all of your glaring imperfections and foibles. Amazings who stand arm-in-arm with you on your ark or around a dinner table.

Yes Forrest’s mama, you are right – you never know what life is going to bring you!

You can be thoughtfully working your way through your box of chocolates. Carefully studying each chocolate. Imagining the deliciousness of each artful creation. Selecting the chocolate bit of goodness to surprise and delight.

Despite the studying, imagining and selecting – bam! You discover the rancid chocolate.

In its rancid wake are elements of chaos and fear. Perhaps even a sense of great loss, injustice, instability, isolation and a long crappy list of other challenging emotions.

Your beautiful box of chocolates, has let you down – just like life can.

Working through the let-down requires heeding another long-standing “stuff mamas say” saying:

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps

Granted, the ensuing chaos of the rancid chocolate may completely annihilate any trace of your bootstraps. Yet creating or rebuilding new bootstraps offers a solid starting point to move beyond the chaos – to move beyond the rancidness.

The best part of creating or rebuilding your bootstraps? You don’t need to go it alone!

Recognizing that either alone or in the presence of others, you may need time to grieve, be angry and cry. By all means take that time.

Do grieve.

Do get angry.

Do cry.

In between, gently begin considering what you may need for support. Perhaps time alone; rest; journaling; doodling; temporarily pausing a commitment; talking with an individual who will listen and not judge providing suggestions or advice if requested. Perhaps allowing others to gift you with help or a kindness to ease your burden.

When you’re ready, begin to identify how you can best help yourself.

Pull out paper and pen. Open a note in your smart phone. Use the bathroom mirror. Write two things.

First – your intention for this period of chaos.

Second – what you want on the other side of the rancidness working its way through your life.

A rancid chocolate has made its way into my life.

In order to begin my own bootstrap pulling-up, I wrote my two things – opting out of the bathroom mirror option…! Based on today’s Abraham-Hicks daily quote I included an element of time.

My intention for the next fifteen days is Celebration. To celebrate the good, the bad, the happy, the sad – all the many contoured elements of living.

What I want during these next fifteen days and beyond is a Healthy Lifestyle (i.e. food, thoughts, actions, discipline, media consumption) and Exploration (i.e. learning, discovery, adventure).

My wish for you – whether you’re faced with something extraordinarily wonderful causing you to vibrantly dance or something appallingly horrible violently knocking you to the ground with fear and agony – is to take the time to write your intention and your wants.

As a result, you will never be very far from your own perfectly, perfect bootstraps.

Many stores have a chiming system. When a customer walks in and out of the store a chime, chimes. Homes with monitoring systems can be programmed with a beeping system. When a door to the home is opened or closed the beep, beeps.

The chimes and beeps are there to indicate comings and goings. To welcome, bid adieu and monitor.

Today I got to thinking about what it would be like to have a personal chiming system.

A system to welcome ourselves to our perfectly, perfect selves. Welcoming ourselves into our own big lives with grace, hugs and support like we do when friends and family stop by.

A system that properly bids adieu to projects and work our perfectly, perfect selves have completed. A real celebration of the accomplishment – for a job well done before hastily moving on to the next big thing.

A system that monitors our perfectly, perfect selves when we lose our way. A system that gently pulls us back to center when we become fearful of taking that next step or taking a risk.

Chime in and take the time to love, celebrate and encourage perfectly, perfect you.